I recently decided to migrate one of my brands’ email accounts from Zoho Mail to Gmail. Google Apps has many more features than just Gmail and we were also having some spam issues with Zoho Mail so the move was a no-brainer really. The only disadvantage is that Gmail is not free for business use with your own domain, but the price is worth paying, especially if you don’t require a large number of mailboxes/users.

The only disadvantage is that Gmail is not free for business use with your own domain, but the price is worth paying, especially if you don’t require a large number of mailboxes/users.

In any case, my biggest headache was how to replicate the same mailboxes I had on Zoho Mail and move the thousands of emails from Zoho to Gmail. At first, I looked at export/import facilities in both services, however, it turned out that the solution is much simpler.

The best way to migrate is to install a mail package on your laptop, in my case I used the free Thunderbird. There are many others, take your pick or use whatever you have installed already.

Secondly, set up the Zoho Mail inboxes on Thunderbird with an IMAP connection. You also need to create the inboxes in Gmail and enable IMAP (it’s off by default). Then also set up the Gmail accounts in Thunderbird. Once they can all connect it’s time to work the magic.

Let’s say I have a Zoho Mail inbox named [email protected] and I have set up the same one on Gmail entitled [email protected] Once they are both able to connect from Thunderbird, what I do is access the Zoho Mail inbox, select all emails, then drag and drop into the same inbox on Gmail. That way the emails will be moved from Zoho Mail’s inbox to the Gmail one. That’s it, easy as pie.

Once you transfer all the emails in this manner, you will also need to set up folders (labels in Gmail) and filters. I suggest you set up the filters within Gmail itself rather than your email client on the laptop. That way you can switch clients at a later stage without having to set up the filters again. Gmail also has a great filtering system so there is no reason to use anything else.

It’s really easy to migrate from one email host to another using IMAP connections. The same procedure described above can in fact be used to migrate between any two email hosts that support IMAP.

Today I sat down for what I hoped would be a quick session of understanding how best to backup our family’s iPhones in a reliable manner. I then proceeded in spending a day trying to understand the utterly confusing world of Apple’s iCloud.

If you are in the same situation, I hope to spare you a few hours through this attempt at explaining the iCloud mess.

We need to consider a few important terms that will help us understand what we can do with iCloud:

iCloud Storage,

iCloud Drive,

iCloud Backup,

iCloud Photo Library,

My Photo Stream.

No wonder people get confused when trying to understand iCloud! Let’s tackle them one by one.

iCloud Storage

iCloud gives you 5GB of storage for free.

You can upgrade your storage to 50GB, 200GB, or 1TB for a reasonable cost.

Once your iCloud Storage is full, your iPhone will stop backing up to iCloud until you purchase additional storage space or free up storage space in iCloud.

iCloud Backup

iCloud Backup is available on iPhones, iPads and iPods. It serves to back up your entire device (or just some aspects of it, depending on your choices) to iCloud.

iCloud Backups count against your available iCloud Storage.

iCloud Drive

Think of this as a sort of Dropbox or Google Drive, however without having direct access to your files through Finder as you would with Dropbox and Google Drive. It allows apps on Macs, iPhones, and iPads to synchronize files using iCloud. So for example, if you create a note on your iPhone and your MacBook is also connected to the internet, that note will also appear on your MacBook a few seconds later.

Your files in iCloud Drive also count against your available iCloud Storage.

iCloud Photo Library

iCloud Photo Library uploads and stores all of your photos and videos in iCloud so you can access them from all your devices.

There are some important differences between iCloud Photo Library and iCloud backup that you should understand before we move on.

iCloud Photo Library: all your devices can access and view individual photos that are stored in the library.

iCloud Backup: you can’t see individual files or photos in your iCloud Backup, even if photos are part of the backup. iCloud Backups are one big file that restores your entire iPhone – there’s no way to access individual files.

If you’re using iCloud Photo Library and iCloud Backup, you could be paying to back up the same photos twice: Once in your iCloud Photo Library, once in your iCloud Backup.

iCloud Photo Library works like the previously mentioned features of iCloud in that that the contents of the photo library count against your available iCloud Storage.

My Photo Stream

My Photo Stream uploads all your new photos and sends them to all your devices. Sounds kind of like iCloud Photo Library, right? But there’s a little difference:

Photos in My Photo Stream do not count against your available iCloud Storage.

The Photo Library is usually the element that takes up most of the storage space in iCloud.

If you want to keep backups of your iPhone photos and videos without running out of storage space on iCloud (the free 5GB), I suggest you use the following strategy:

Turn Off Photo Library As Part Of iCloud Backup

Turn Off iCloud Photo Library

Turn On My Photo Stream on your iPhone and iPad

Turn On My Photo Stream on your Mac or PC

Since My Photo Stream does not count against your available iCloud storage you will not have any problems with space utilisation in your iCloud account. The photos will be transferred to your Mac where you can then include them in your cloud or Time Capsule backups.

Here’s a productivity hack that works just as well for solo workers as for those who work in big offices with lots of co-workers around.

Whenever you get stuck on something, you have to try to solve the problem by yourself for 15 minutes, but then when the 15 minutes are up you have to ask for help.

People tend to fall on two ends of a continuum. Either they don’t put in any effort and ask someone right away, or they get really into something and keep at it for hours even though they don’t make any tangible progress.

Typically those who ask right away are those who have very low confidence with the problem at hand. I’ve seen this many times with older people who haven’t grown up with computers for example. They are afraid of doing a mistake and breaking things, so they will ask someone to help them at every little step, even though with some thought (or a Google search) they could definitely have arrived at the answer themselves.

On the other hand, those who act obstinately and become all worked up on a problem for a long time tend to be people of high technical ability. They have tons of confidence in their abilities and believe that they’re just one step away from the solution. They can sometimes forget how much time has passed since they started to tackle the problem. When they do realise how much time was wasted it sometimes makes them feel even more frustrated and ashamed that they haven’t solved it yet, and spend even more time on it.

The work environment also plays an important rule. Working on your own tends to encourage the second type of behavior, while working in an office where colleagues are close by and very accessible means we are more likely to ask right away before putting in any work. Asking too soon will waste other people’s time and it also means that you’re less likely to learn things properly so you can do them yourself without any problem in the future.

I’ve done both of these mistakes many times in the past. Nowadays the 15-minute rule helps me avoid these situations.

This is also related to the rubber duck method, which I use especially if I don’t have quick access to someone who can help and I’m stumped. Here’s how that works:

Step 2) Place rubber duck on desk and inform it you are just going to go over some code with it, if that’s all right.

Step 3) Explain to the duck what your code is supposed to do, and then go into detail and explain your code line by line

Step 4) At some point you will tell the duck what you are doing next and then realise that that is not in fact what you are actually doing. The duck will sit there serenely, happy in the knowledge that it has helped you on your way.

Note: In a pinch, a coworker might be able to substitute for the duck, however, it is often preferred to confide mistakes to the duck instead of your coworker.

Original Credit: ~Andy from lists.ethernal.org

Of course, the rubber duck can also be substituted by anything else. One college professor used to keep a stuffed dog outside his office. Before being allowed in to speak to him, you had to explain the issue to the dog first. The dog solved 50% of the questions. It might be hard to believe at first but try it out, it works!

One of my secret weapons for productivity and habit forming is the use of apps to help me keep in line and encourage me. These are the best apps that I recommend if you want to start a new habit or develop a daily ritual.

My favourite app. Awesome interface and tremendous flexibility. You can create a habit, assign a colour and icon and also the desired schedule. You can make it a daily event, weekly or monthly. You can also keep a journal/notes in relation to each goal. Moreover, you can set each habit to be performed at multiple times per day (morning, afternoon, evening) if you wish. This can be useful for tasks such as checking email 3 times a day (another great productivity tip) instead of constantly having your inbox open. You can even set a habit to be performed a number of times per week instead of on specific days, so that leaves you flexible to reach a total number rather than being tied to specific days. I use this for my training regimes.

You can even set a habit to be performed a number of times per week instead of on specific days, so that leaves you flexible to reach a total number rather than being tied to specific days. I use this for my training regimes. For example, I have a weekly to target to cycle 3 times, but I decide when to go out cycling depending on the weather. When it’s too windy or hot I do something else like doing laps in the pool. So having that flexibility is very handy.

Of course, the app also gives you a life log showing your performance on each habit and whether you have any positive streaks. As with all other habit building apps, Productive can be set to remind you about your habits at specific times each day via phone notifications. With the premium version, you get unlimited habits, the ability to set specific reminders per habit, passcode lock and a floodlight (light) theme.

The premium version costs €3.99 and is well worth the money if you’re using Productive on a regular basis.

Nice and simple interface, it also includes motivational images and quotes as well access to a community forum about your specific goal or its category e.g. Fitness. It encourages you to build streaks (consecutive days of performing your desired habit). Its interface is quite good, however, it’s not as flexible as Productive.

A simple app that works well if you’re not doing any fancy stuff and just want to perform a daily habit such as journaling. The best thing about this app is that it has a Mac OS app that goes with it so you can use it both on your laptop and your phone. Sync is done over iCloud.

PayPal remains one of the most popular ways of accepting online payments, so you’re bound to be using it if you’re involved in online business. A question that comes up sooner or later is whether you should open a separate business account for each of your brands or products.

Separation of Personal and Business PayPal Accounts

First of all, I want to clarify that you should first of all have separate personal and business PayPal accounts. This is allowed by PayPal as detailed in this FAQ. You shouldn’t be mixing your personal transactions with those of your business. You should keep separate personal and business bank accounts and you should also do likewise with PayPal. Then link the personal PayPal account to your personal credit card or bank account, and the business PayPal account to your business credit card or bank account.

With that out of the way, the next stage as you continue to grow your business will be launching and selling more than one product. With revenue from both of these products coming in through the same PayPal account, there can be some challenges.

The first challenge you will encounter is that of accounting. Since you will be seeing the total amount of revenue generated from both your businesses, it will be hard to visualise at a glance how much of that revenue belongs to each business. Of course you will also hopefully have good reporting facilities from the e-commerce platform you are using which will somewhat compensate for this disadvantage. Moreover, if you are accepting payments through other systems apart from PayPal (e.g. Stripe/Braintree), you shouldn’t be looking at the revenue stats in PayPal as a measure of how you’re doing because that figure will be missing all other payments that would have come through via the other payments systems.

What to do if you have a separate company for each brand

As long as you have separate companies, there should be no issue at all. A company is legally distinct from its owner. Each can and should have its own bank account, credit card, email, etc. etc.

As a result, you will be able to sign each one up individually at PayPal. You will be the representative of your company for each PayPal account, but the PayPal accounts will each belong to the respective company.

And if you don’t have a separate company for each brand?

Here’s when things get tricky. Many business owners create a company and then sell a number of products/brands from that one company. This is usually when the question arises about whether they should have separate PayPal accounts for each product/brand.

There are a number of pros and cons for each way to go and no clear answer to this question.

If you are planning to spin off and sell a particular product or brand, you should always create a separate PayPal account for it and treat it as a separate entity from the rest of your business. During the selling process and the due diligence period, it will be so much easier for you and the buyer if you have a separate PayPal account housing the transaction of just that product that you will be selling off. Otherwise, you will have to filter things which can get messy, plus you won’t be able to just transfer the ownership of that product’s PayPal account to the new owner, which is a disadvantage for them as they won’t get the history of that account. This will affect your selling price so keep that in mind.

For the new owner, having a PayPal account that has been previously set up and having everything working smoothly is a very important bonus. The changeover will be easier and they will have a handy history of every transaction recorded from the inception of that product. Moreover, you have to also keep in mind that PayPal allows lower transaction rates depending on your monthly volume of sales.

Another thing to consider is whether you will have subscriptions and recurring payments processed through PayPal. If that’s the case I would recommend using two separate Paypal accounts as it will be very messy or downright impossible to move over those subscriptions to a new account in the future if needed (for example in the case of a sale of one of the products to a new owner).

Most e-commerce software systems provide additional and handy functionality through PayPal’s IPN system. This can allow you to do things like give refunds from the e-commerce system itself rather than having to login to your PayPal account to process the refund. If you use PayPal Standard, you can use a single account for multiple sites. If you use PayPal Express, you need to use a separate account for each site. This is because PayPal Standard supports multiple IPN URLs while PayPal Express only supports one.

Now if you decide to go for one PayPal account to cover all your products, it might be a good idea to still pass your payments through separate email addresses linked to the same PayPal account. This is very useful if you are receiving payments from several different sources. To give you a concrete example, imagine a blog having affiliate arrangements with tens or hundreds of product vendors. If they all have their own affiliate systems, as is frequently the case, you would have signed up with each vendor and gave them your PayPal email address. Now if in the future you sell that blog, the new owner would have a very tedious job having to log in to each of these affiliate accounts and change the PayPal email address to his instead of yours. However if you had used an additional email address to your company’s PayPal account, the transition would be much smoother. You would just have to unlink that email address from your company’s PayPal account, and concurrently the new owner would add that email address to his company’s PayPal account. From that moment onwards all payments will reach the new owner’s account, without having to change any settings on the vendors’ side.

An important pro for having just one account for all your brands (if you don’t plan to sell in the immediate future) is easier management. You don’t have to log in to several PayPal accounts to check on things, you just have one account. Another potential issue with having multiple accounts is which account to process expenses from. If it’s not easy for you to associate expenses to a particular product, it might be a struggle to choose which PayPal account to use for them. For example, if you are using a backup service for all your product sites, and you want to make an automatic monthly payment, which PayPal account will you use if you have a number of them? Having just one account eliminates this problem altogether.

Another thing to consider is that PayPal assigns different commission rates based on the volume of transactions per month that an account generates. Thus if you have everything going into one account there might be a better chance for you to get the lowest rate than if you separate the accounts and hence lower the volume of each account.

How does it work with other payment processors?

Braintree does not allow you to run more than one website per account. You will, therefore, have to create a new Braintree account for each e-commerce store you have. The basic rule they use to determine whether a new account is needed is whether the URL is different for each of your products. So if you are selling all your products from www.mycoolstore.com you’re going to be fine with one Braintree account, but if you’re selling from www.blackstore.com and www.whitestore.com you will need two Braintree accounts.

Hopefully, this is helpful to you when deciding whether to open separate accounts for each product you own or not. Please leave a comment if you have any further questions and I’ll do my best to answer them.